Friday morning should begin to define whether the gulf between the two sides remains.

Finn Academy, still without a home nine weeks before it is scheduled to open, said it will deliver by 10 a.m. Friday a formal offer to lease vacant Ernie Davis Middle School from the district.

Tuesday night, trustees for the area's first chfoarter school, approved offering the district $105,000 to lease the building as its temporary home for the first year.

The trustees also encouraged parents and backers to begin lobbying the district, starting with a quickly planned meeting held Wednesday night at Steele Memorial Library in Elmira to educate parents how to best do that.

Finn officials delivered separate letters to Elmira school officials during the day, stating their desire for a lease and requested a reply by 10 a.m. Friday.

Wednesday afternoon, Elmira school officials reacted. The message was clear: make us an offer.

"We have not received an offer to date to consider," Superintendent Hillary Austin said. "We learned at the same time everyone else did," she said, referring to media reports.

"I can't say this enough. We don't have an offer right now. The school board absolutely will look favorably to receiving any offer on the building," said board President Sara Lattin, who joined Austin at a press conference at district headquarters.

They acknowledged Finn Academy's timeline is short, but said the district has a fiduciary responsibility to all district taxpayers and will have to scrutinize monetary terms, lease length and other requirements requested of the district in any lease offer.

The school and its 7.5 acres have been listed for sale for $1.1 million, but it has drawn no formal offers since it was listed, nor even lease offers after a lease restriction was removed last year, district officials said.

Last September, the district rejected Finn Academy's offer to buy the building for $1. Finn officials have often cited the regulations in effect in New York City, but not upstate, that require the school district to provide any unused schools or space for free to charter schools.

Outside Wednesday's news conference, Finn Academy Head of School Maggie Thurber said a formal offer is being prepared and will be delivered to the district by 10 a.m. Friday.

She indicated the charter school is seeking a quick response, such as during the school board's next meeting on June 24. Lattin reiterated there is no offer to consider yet, and board members are polled before each meeting to determine which items to put on the agenda.

"We have 216 scholars with the chance to go to our school," Martina Baker, chair of the Finn Academy trustees, said at Tuesday's meeting. "The children have a right to go there. They (Elmira school district) can be a partner in making that happen.

"There is no reason the doors to Ernie Davis should be locked to us. I will be pounding on Ernie Davis' doors until Aug. 17. You have my word on that," Baker told the crowd of 100.

Austin, though, issued some caution Wednesday to the charter school about the shape of the former middle school. She said it resembles more of a building than a school, after it was shut down following the 2013-14 school year.

"We do not have a current certificate of occupancy for it to be used by students," Austin said. "It is not a matter of turning over the keys."

When the district restructured its schools and decided to close some, it removed furnishings and equipment from Ernie Davis and dismantled its kitchen, Austin said.

"We removed the working parts. There is no building-wide phone system in there, only a line out to call 911. We did not upgrade the technology in there. There is only a bare-bones computer system in there. These are significant things to be considering," Austin said.

Thurber said architects hired by Finn Academy examined Ernie Davis last summer and said of all available area buildings, it would be the easiest to upgrade for school use. She did not say Wednesday what the cost of that would be.

The tuition-free public school, which has a five-year state charter to operate, said it has 216 students enrolled in grades kindergarten through third, the vast majority from the Elmira school district. It planned to stagger its start over a couple weeks, first open its doors Aug. 17, and add one grade per year through eighth grade.

Thurber said its charter allows some leeway to push back the start of school.

While it has chosen a permanent home, the former Our Lady of Lourdes School in West Elmira, it needs extensive work to meet current state Education Department guidelines. That will take time, at least a year. It will also take $2.5 million to accomplish, money Finn Academy doesn't have until it can find a lender.

As a result, urgency has set in. Ernie Davis is the backup plan. Should that fail, the charter school admits the remaining options are undesirable: get a waiver from the state and find a suitable building in another school district, or use the 2015-16 school year as an additional "planning year," as it says its charter allows, and open to students for the 2016-17 school year.

Parent Mike Strobel of West Elmira, whose daughter is enrolled to attend kindergarten at the school, expressed a common sentiment at Tuesday's meeting.

"I think we are fine with everything except the anxiety of not knowing where the facility is. That is a significant piece. As far as curriculum and staff, it is fantastic. As parents we like to know where we are dropping off our daughter," Strobel said.

Thurber said Finn Academy has lists of supplies and furniture ready to order, but nowhere to send them yet. They still haven't received school records for individual students from the Elmira district, but admitted that is a time-consuming task.

All along, Thurber and other school officials maintain they still believe they can open on time, this year.

During a nearly two-hour meeting Tuesday night, they passed a resolution to purchase the place they want to call a permanent home. The measure, passed 8-0, calls for buying the former Lourdes elementary school at 301 Demarest Parkway for $200,000 from the Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

Finn officials said they have the required $20,000 down payment from a private lender and that money has been placed in escrow. They said a separate private lender has promised to loan them the remaining $180,000 for payback over two years, but they didn't release other details because documents are not signed yet.

Before it can open, the Lourdes building needs $2.5 million in renovations such as asbestos removal, new windows, new roof and new heating plant. Finn officials said owning a building, Lourdes, should help them in securing financing for such work.

Baker and others said they have explored all other former schools in the area as a temporary home and all would require at least $1 million in renovations, compared to Ernie Davis which they characterized as nearly ready to go.

Baker said leasing the 136,000-square-foot Ernie Davis building would benefit the school district by relieving it of maintenance, utility and other costs.

Austin said she's has heard reports circulating in the community that those costs exceed $120,000 a year, but stated Wednesday that district gas and electric bills for the building for a 13-month period, including a month when school was in session, were only $43,000 and maintenance performed there was minimal.

Finn Academy officials say they would need to use only part of the building, and would block off the fire-damaged second-floor library as the school district did during the building's last years of use.

Hampering Finn Academy in its quest for a home are state regulations. Unlike school districts, charter schools in New York get no state building aid to buy, expand or renovate buildings. The Elmira district, in comparison, can get back 89 cents of every dollar it spends for qualified work, Finn officials said. Charter proponents have lobbied to change that and there is a pending lawsuit in the state seeking the same remedy.

Austin and Lattin admitted that there has been limited direct communication between the district and charter school officials, and none for awhile.

Of charter school plans to publicly lobby for a lease, Austin said, "It's positive to see a passion in terms of education."